


alone, for now

by kwritten



Series: my fem-minis [24]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Apocalypse, F/F, Female-Centric, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 03:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2176506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au post-nfa in a war-zone LA<br/>recipient requested The Hyperion, tequila, just the girls on their own</p>
            </blockquote>





	alone, for now

Movies always end right in the moment before the real work begins. The credits roll when you feel satisfied that everything is either at its most tragic, or right in the moment when tragedy feels impossible.  
  
But if there is one thing that Fred Burkle – sometimes inhabited by a hell-god – knows deep in her bones (that are still hers… mostly), it’s that the movies are wrong.  
  
And most fairy tales.  
  
And nearly every book she’s ever read.  
  
(Even those super scientific ones that she held onto in her mind like a security blanket when she was covered in dirt and hiding in a cave in Pylea.)  
  
(Even those failed her.)  
  
  
  
  
  
Coming into the aftermath of LA being destroyed there’s a very different sort of unravelling in her chest than the patchwork denial that kept everything working properly as they sped away from Sunnydale.  
  
“I’ve lived through too many apocalypses.”  
  
There’s nothing really sarcastic or bitter about the comment, just a tired sort of longing.  
There’s no one to hear, anyway.  
  
You are supposed to speed away from the smoky remains, not come back and pick your way through them.   
  
When she was small her mother adopted a kitten on a whim. Faith had always suspected the small thing had belonged to a family and home before her mother plucked it away and dropped it in her lap. In those days, they moved around a lot; a dirty motel room here, a bare mattress on the floor there. It was less an organized sense of moving about with possessions in hand and more the honest vagrancy of addicts. They went where the drugs were and Faith slept where she was safe from being trampled, with that dirty kitten clutched to her chest. She learned that corners weren’t always the safest because when you don’t have any balance, clutching at walls to lead you to the door also lead down to the floor and right onto her head. No, cupboards were safe. Linen closets. Small spaces with something that protected her head. Spaces where her mother couldn’t find her at two in the morning and drag her out with her manic smile and too-bright eyes and a demand for a song or a dance. Faith knew at three that she was no good at singing or dancing. She knew because she had been dragged in front of adults whose desire for entertainment turned to annoyance or hostility too quickly. She knew because when she disappointed her mother in those moments she nearly always forgot, but there was a chance that in the morning she’d remember and maybe deny her food or a bath or a toilet until Faith cried. It was easier, sleeping in a hallway closet or in an empty bathtub, with her kitten held tightly to her chest. Except it kept running away. It would squirm out of her hands and run back to wherever her mother had picked it up. Within a few days it would be dropped back in her hands, her mother never letting go of the fact that it belonged to her, and needed to be hunted down every three days. After three to four months, the kitten disappeared and her mother didn’t go fetch it. She had finally forgot, but it was the longest that Faith had ever seen her stick to something, running out into the world every three or four days to fetch a skinny kitten that didn’t want to be found.  
  
Trudging through the wreckage towards what she hoped would be a welcoming party, Faith wasn’t quite sure if she felt more like that damn cat – running back to what was familiar, to a place that felt like home – or like her mother, desperately seeking something that was only going to slip out from between her fingers once more.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When Fred woke up she was Fred and that felt very new and fresh for some intoxicating reason. She took a deep breath that was quickly caught in her chest, too full of smoke and dust for her to inhale the way she longed to.   
  
She felt a nagging sensation at the back of her brain, like she was supposed to be fighting something there, but all she felt was emptiness.  
  
She made her way back home without a thought. And ignored the emptiness in her mind, the glaring gaps of memory.  
  
(Ignored the aching in her chest, like a fresh wound still bleeding, still throbbing.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The Hyperion feels remarkably untouched in a city laid to waste.  
  
Faith would question it if she wasn’t so tired. It was relatively quiet on the streets right now; but the scanty news reports suggested that the bulk of the demons were moving south. She only came here first because He taught her to always retrace her steps, start at the beginning and work forward until she came to an answer.  
  
He also taught her how to murder with a smile on her lips and no remorse in her heart, but her court-appointed therapist assured her that she could keep the good and throw away the bad. And so she had.  
  
  
  
  
  
The Hyperion is nearly silent and Faith tries to ignore the small drop of her heart as she picks her way carefully through the debris. Okay, so she was expecting troops and a war council, or at least a skinny kid with a crossbow and an idiot with spiked hair.   
  
She makes her way into the office and sits down behind the desk wearily, putting her feet up on the desk, as if daring the owner to come in and shout at her. She has no idea where to go from here. Basic necessities like food and a toilet and a shower are going to become an issue soon, and now that she’s here she’s not entirely sure what to do next.  
  
  
  
  
She closes her eyes for only a moment – but it very well could have been hours – and when she opens them again a tiny woman is sitting on the desk in front of her cross-legged, a bottle of tequila in her hands and dark shadows under her eyes.  
  
“Well hello there,” she says and her voice has a touch of an accent in it, one that calls to mind sweet tea and open air.  
  
“I know you,” Faith grabs the bottle out of her hands and takes a long swallow. “Didn’t expect to see you alive, of all people.”  
  
She shrugs and keeps her wide eyes on Faith, “Where is everyone?”  
  
Faith feels a desperate, shallow laugh rising in her chest, “I was hoping you could tell me. I’ve only just arrived.”  
  
Fred’s face falls, “Oh.”  
  
“You’re alone? How long?”  
  
Fred cocks her head to the side, as if listening for something, “Alone for the moment I guess. And I don’t know for how long. I just woke up this morning and seem to be… missing some minor details in my memory.”  
  
“Minor details?”  
  
“Well the skyline is gone, for instance, and the last thing I remember LA was more than just a pile of dirt.” She takes the bottle out of Faith’s hands and takes a long swallow from the bottle, shuddering and grimacing as she hands it back.  
  
Faith tilts the bottle towards her, “Cheers.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
All the stories are wrong, the bad guy wins sometimes and sometimes the city gets burned down to the base and you drink a bottle of tequila after the world ends sometimes.  
  
Because after everything is lost and nothing is left standing, someone has to wake up and keep going.  
  
  
  
  
Fred wanted very strongly to be an artist when she was a child. First it was the violin and then it was oil paintings and then it was the stage. That was before she went on a field trip to the planetarium and she looked up at the stars through a telescope for the first time. After that, her heart belonged to science. There was a beauty to it, an artistry in the expanse of the universe that she could read in numbers and charts better than she could ever express her wonder with words or her clumsy hands.   
  
She’s never looked back and wished for that again, for a connection to the world beyond her numbers and her science. But there’s something about waking up again when everything has ended and sharing a bottle of liquor with a stranger from a distant memory that can’t be captured quite as well with numbers.  
  
They are alone much longer than she expects them to. (She loses short spans of time, an hour here, an afternoon there, and Faith never drops her gaze from her eyes when she doesn’t ask the questions she knows she ought.) They rebuild here and there, they sweep away the dust and wipe away the blood. They seek solutions in books and in numbers. And eventually she knows that they’ll find someone else and it won’t be just them on an island anymore.  
  
Eventually.  
  
But for now the world is dead and it is only the two of them and so when she presses her lips to Faith’s one night it feels as natural as breathing and as necessary.   
  
She’ll find a solution in her numbers.   
Or she’ll find a solution with her fists.   
Or someone will arrive with a solution for them and it’ll be alright again.  
  
  
But there will be no record of it all. No pages for someone to pour over later. No way for her to give over a neat little package history of what it was like, living on the edge of the end of the world.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I like it better this way, anyway.”  
  
“No one writes stories about what happens after the ending…”  
  
“That’s because it’s just for us. For the survivors.”  
  
“Just us, alone.”  
  
“Anyway, what words would you use?”  
  
  
  
  
_What she’ll tell them later is about the dirt and the sweat and the tears. About the hordes of lesser demons that tore through and kept them from leaving. About the nights when she was sure Faith wouldn’t return from her search for food or supplies or patrol. About the day it rained and the generators went out and they found a stock room full of candles. About the day they finally decided to start keeping track of days. About the day she stopped thinking about being found because they were sure everything else was gone. About the pile of makeshift weapons they created. About the empty bottle of tequila that they put on display as a symbol of… something they were never able to pinpoint._  
  
_What she won’t tell them is about the first time they kissed. About the way Faith’s lips tasted on her tongue, sweet and dry. About the way they learned to move around each other. About the nights tangled up in each other because there was no tomorrow and they had already forgotten about yesterday. About sitting side by side and feeling comfort flow between them with every touch. About each moment that they were together and something was new until it wasn’t new and it just **was**  and that’s how it is now. What she won’t tell them – should they ever come (though she is beginning to doubt they ever existed at all) – is how it wasn’t easy or comforting all the time, how they fought, how they scratched at each other like wild cats, how they hurt each other because there was no one there to see, how they bandaged up their wounds without hostility, how they sunk into each other like quicksand. _  
  
  
  
  
  
When the world ends, you make a new one.  
  
The stories don’t tell you how, because there are no words for it anyway.  
  
If there were words for it, it wouldn’t be an ending, not really.


End file.
